Destinata (Valguard) (19 page)

As Charlie ran towards the square she could see her vision from earlier changing and shifting. Something must have altered the course that they were on originally because now she could see the Valguard gathering in the square and the town’s people forming a human barricade of sorts around them. They were all in the exact same positions as in her earlier vision but this time they weren’t shackled to each other. They stood proud and defiant against the Valguard. As the images ran through Charlie’s mind, a smile came to her face. Finally the people of the town were ready to win this. They had faith in Charlie that she herself didn’t have yet. The feeling was intense, she felt the sting of tears in the corner of her eyes but held them back. She needed to be strong for her people now. No one was going to trust a blubbering mess to get them out of this.

She arrived at the town square covered in perspiration and exerted beyond anything she had ever felt. She thought that she could very well lay down on the grass right here and fall asleep within seconds but it only took the sight of the Valguard that had gathered to put a damper on that thought.

From amidst the crowd Charlie could hear mumblings of ‘What’s going on?’ and ‘Why are we here?’ And she knew it was time to speak up and take her role as temporary leader among the humans.

Still donning her contact lenses the residents of Tole wouldn’t doubt Charlie. She had grown up here, most had watched her grow from a baby, to a child, to a rebellious teenager and then into the young adult that stood before them. She felt disgusted at herself for keeping her true identity a secret but revealing herself now was just going to do more harm than good. She needed them to follow her to succeed with her plan and taking her contacts out now would ruin that.

Glad that she had a friend like Matt on hand – who had sent an automated phone message to everyone in town, telling them where to meet. She closed her eyes and silently congratulated him on a job well done.

Standing in the middle of the circle she cleared her throat and addressed the people
and Valguard alike that surrounded her.

“You’re probably wondering why I gathered you all here when I knew the Valguard would be returning at the same time.”

Murmured agreement and annoyance.

“
Well the truth is I needed human’s and Valguard alike to be here tonight because you all need to know that we are trapped in Tole, not by the Valguard but by a corporation called Lucas Corp. They own this land and they
think
that they own us. They agreed to let the Valguard settle here nearly twenty years ago to conduct experiments on us to see whether they were successful in breeding a new super race of Valguard’s but Lucas Corp. was smarter than they had anticipated and not only have they kept the humans of Tole captive for almost twenty years but they have also kept the Valguard captive.”

There was outrage among the Valguard at the thought of being trapped here like animals. It was obvious that only those higher up among their ranks new of the deception and agreed to it.

“That’s right, you can’t leave town any more than we can. I’ve come to support a truce between the humans of Tole and the Valguard’s.”

Now there was real outrage between the two races, neither willingly wanting to cooperate with the other and thinking what Charlie suggested was complete and utter nonsense.

She waited for the yelling to stop before continuing but it didn’t. Not until she felt big hands grasp her shoulders and realize that everyone in the square was staring straight at her. Looking down at the blood stained hands she knew who it was that had her gripped so tightly he threatened to cut of the blood circulation.

“Now, now Charlie, we wouldn’t be trying to convince the enemies to get along now would we?
Because that would be wrong. Right?”

“We both know that the only way we are getting out of here is in a bag or joining forces
James.
”

“
My dear, you seem to be forgetting why we are here. Don’t you remember the little chat that we had back at Harry’s?”

Before Charlie could retort James had gripped her burned arms tightly in his hands and squeezed tighter and tighter until the pain was unbearable and she let out a high-pitched blood curdling scream. He ripped the make-shift bandages free from her arms and the cool night air hitting the burns brought tears to her eyes. Tears that this time she couldn’t hold back. Holding her arms in the air by the wrists James addressed the people for the first time.

“This… Is what happens when you defy your masters. If you play with fire, you are going to get burned.”

The cries of outrage at Charlie’s suggestion of a truce were nothing compared to what surrounded her now, the roars of the people deafening. But outrage was not the only emotion conveyed at the sight of Charlie’s burns somewhere from within the crowds of people she could hear murmurs of submission. She had failed them, there was no way they would declare a truce now
, but she couldn’t give in that easily. She had to keep trying, after all it was keep trying or end up in confinement with others like herself and then be forced to kill them for Lucas Corps. own sick and twisted amusement.

She wrenched her wrists free of James’s hands and elbowed him in the exact spot that she had shot him with the arrow.
He bent forward involuntarily and clutched his chest giving Charlie the precise reaction she had wanted.

“Yes James but I’m not the only one wounded. And unlike you, whose wound was delivered by me, a lowly half-human girl
. My own wounds were acquired by saving my friends from the fire you set in their house.”

James was smiling now though he had no reason to be. Charlie had shown him up in front of the Valguard and the human population of Tole. All around her she could hear the people whispering and she realized all too late the mistake she had made. She had admitted to
being only half human and from the angered looks on everybody’s faces she could tell they weren’t receiving this news well. Closing her eyes in exasperation she turned to face the crowd once more.

“Yes. I’m part Valguard. My
father
was Mikal also known as the head of the Valguard’s or Mike from the coffee shop to most of you. I killed him yesterday in my efforts to free this town. My human DNA allows me to choose which of my Valguard abilities and how much of them I want to use. I’m no different to you except in the fact that I was the first experiment. I am living proof that Lucas Corp. is trying to raise an army of super-Valguard’s to use as a weapon. A weapon that they will readily dispose of to satisfy their own sick and twisted minds. The time has come to make your choice, either we stand together and fight or we fight each other until there is not one person left in this town.”

A woman wh
o looked to be in her early forties stepped forward, shaking and obviously nervous in the presence of Charlie and the Valguard forces behind her.

“Why are your eyes different? Why don’t they glow like theirs?”

Charlie was hoping no one would ask this question because although she was ready to omit her Valguard ancestry she couldn’t lie about it.

“They do glow.
Actually a lot brighter than theirs at times. I’m wearing contacts.”

She reached up and removed the contacts from her eyes, revealing the shockingly bright purple iris’s beneath. The crowd gasped in unison at the sight and she knew right then that she had lost them as allies.

“You’re just like they are.”

“We need to kill them all!”

“We won’t be taken for fools!”

The town had become blood thirsty at the sight of one of their own being ‘turned’ and she knew at that point that either way, whoever won, she was not going to live out the night.

Over the shouting crowd Charlie could hear her own name being called but who would be calling out to her now? They had all turned against her. All but one that is.

“Charlie,
it’s 10pm.”

“Zane.”

She whispered the name having completely forgotten that her friend would be bound to the pole behind her at 10pm she was grateful for his presence. He hadn’t been there previously when Charlie was having her standoff with James; they must have brought him in amongst the confusion that occurred after she had revealed what she truly was. She suddenly remembered the backup plan that she had in place with Matt and fiddling in her pocket she found what she was looking for. She reached her hands to her ears discreetly; making it look like she was pushing her hair behind her ears she made sure that she tilted her head slightly so that Zane – who was looking in her direction – could see the small yellow buds that she had just placed in them and letting her hair fall back down once again. She casually reached back into her pocket and very carefully pushed the numbers on her phone that she knew would connect her to Matt’s phone back at the cottage. She could feel the vibrations of the sound coming through the phone which meant it was ringing, a brief pause and then a deeper, shorter vibration meaning Matt had answered. She looked at Zane and scrunched her eyes together as hard as she could signaling that he should do the same and once he had, she shouted at her pocket as loud as she could.

“Matt!
NOW!”

Within seconds the town was scattering, The Valguard brought to their knees by the horrible screeching that filled the air, their naked eyes blinded by the light that surrounded them. Charlie had pulled her glasses from her pocket the moment she had heard the amplified alarm bell ring and shielded her eyes from the intensified lights. Matt had done it. He had succeeded in hacking into the town’s power grid and
had exaggerated the strength of the flood lights that were placed around town square and increased the pitch of the alarm that signaled an evacuation. Charlie felt like it had been days since she had come up with the plan. She remembered thinking at the time that there was no way they could compete with the Valguard’s strength if the truce didn’t pan out but they could mess with their senses, so much so that they would effectively be crippled and defenseless. Although it wasn’t exactly supposed to turn out like this. The town was supposed to be fighting with her, not fleeing from her but Charlie had learned something since the war with the Valguard had started. She had learned that it was a very rare occasion that things actually went according to plan and when they didn’t you better come up with a backup plan as quickly as possible.

Tonight’s backup plan was to free Zane from his bindings and run. There was nothing left for them here now, they would have to go into hiding until they could decide on yet another plan to get themselves out of the mess that Charlie had gotten them into.

Not wasting any time she moved to the pole that marked the center of the square and started to tear through the rope that bound Zane’s hands behind him. He was free within seconds and they had started to run but not before James leapt at them and knocked Zane to the ground.

“Run Charlie.
Now!”

“I’m not leaving you behind again Zane, get up!”

Getting up wasn’t as easy as it sounded when Zane was pinned to the ground under the weight of James’s body who was still writhing with the pain from the alarms.

Charlie took another arrow from her quiver and aimed it directly over the section of body she knew his heart would be in and let the arrow fly. He moved just before the arrow hit him in the back, making it so that yet again she had missed his heart but this time it wasn’t intentional. Shooting him had worked well
enough though, he was now slumped on Zane’s body, completely immobile but still breathing. She reached a hand to Zane who was desperately trying to cover his ears and get up at the same time.

“Oh! Here.”

She handed him a second set of small bright colored ear buds which he gratefully took and shoved into his own ears. Seconds later they were both headed in the direction of the forest and as far away from the town as they could get.

They arrived at Kara’s cottage in desperate need of water and a rest and were met at the door by a very fidgety Eloise and a slightly calmer but more shaken Matt behind her.

“What the hell is going on? We heard you screaming but we couldn’t make out what was going on.”

That’s when Matt held
up his phone and Charlie realized that she had never disconnected the call. Matt and El’ had heard the frantic screams of the town people as they fled, they’d heard Charlie’s unwillingness to leave Zane and then they would have heard nothing until they had reached the door of the cottage. Charlie could only imagine how that must have felt for them and if she were in that position she was sure that she would not have handled it half as well as they had.

“I’m so
sorry, I completely forgot to disconnect the call. You shouldn’t have had to listen to that.”

“Don’t worry Charlie, you’re both safe and back here now. It’s fine. I’m guessing the plan didn’t go so well though?”

“Understatement of the year. I let it slip that I was part Valguard and I lost them. Now I have the Valguard’s and the human’s after me and them against each other. I royally stuffed things up this time. I thought I was supposed to stop the war once it started. Not keep cocking things up and making it worse.”